Tech giant Meta’s new social network Threads registered five million subscribers in the first four hours of its availability, Facebook social network founder Mark Zuckerberg said.
“We just surpassed five million registrations in the first four hours,” Zuckerberg wrote, in a post on the official Threads account (threads in Portuguese).
Meta, owner of the social networks Instagram and Facebook and the WhatsApp mobile calling and messaging application, intends to dethrone Twitter with this new social network.
Threads was available in 100 countries as of 00:00 this Thursday, but not in EU countries and smartphones with the Android operating system.
Instagram lead Adam Mosseri regretted that Threads is not currently available in the EU, explaining that if Meta had to wait for approval from Brussels, the launch would have been delayed by many months.
The launch of Threads was initially scheduled for 3:00 p.m. (Lisbon time) this Thursday, but the company brought it forward to 00:00.
According to Meta, among the celebrities who have joined the new social network are the Colombian singer Shakira, the British chef Gordon Ramsay and the American actor Jack Black.
Media and entertainment giants like Billboard magazine and The Hollywood Reporter, HBO television, and Netflix also have Threads accounts, as does National Public Radio (NPR).
In April, NPR announced it was leaving Twitter after Twitter, owned by mogul Elon Musk, labeled the radio’s main account “state-affiliated press,” a term also used to identify media outlets controlled or heavily influenced by authoritarian governments such as Russia. and china
On Tuesday, Elon Musk was quick to criticize Threads, saying the social network will collect all kinds of data from users, including identity, health and fitness, financial information, location, purchases, contacts and “sensitive information,” concerns too. previously raised by Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey.
The app, which is linked to Instagram, has an interface very similar to Twitter’s, but simpler: posts are grouped into two columns, “threads” and “replies,” and users can like, comment, share or forward the messages.
The launch of Threads comes after Elon Musk announced on Saturday a limit on the number of Twitter messages that can be consulted per account and per day, a decision criticized by users and advertisers of the social network.
On Monday, Twitter also announced that the TweetDeck dashboard, hugely popular among the most active users, will soon be accessible only to paid accounts.
Source: TSF
